The Saudi intervention in Yemen as the lead military power in a Gulf coalition opens a Pandora’s Box that could be the first fatal step in unravelling the United Nations security system set up after World War II. The UN system prohibits military intervention in any foreign country without Security Council authorization and the UN’s founding principle, considered sacrosanct by many, is non-interference in the internal affairs of...

Reading the Old Testament book of Judges with the people of Living Water Lutheran Church in the past week has underscored an important truth articulated famously by Lord Acton: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The Old Testament judges started out as people without status. But God called them to exercise military and judicial authority on behalf of His people. The judges often had success. But they...

As citizens, we all have responsibilities that must be fulfilled for the nation to be protected and function optimally. However, the obligations at this point in our history are relatively minimal. All men (both citizens and immigrants) between ages 18 and 26 have to sign up for the Selective Service and if drafted have to serve in the armed forces. But the chances of currently being drafted are virtually nil. Fortunately (or perhaps...

Over the weekend it was reported that German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, when pressed by journalist Glenn Greenwald as to why Germany didn’t offer Edward Snowden political asylum, replied that Washington, ‘told us they would stop notifying us of plots and other intelligence matters.’ This editorial from Mexico’s La Jornada implores Germany to live up to its image as a ‘global benchmark of...

In December 1984, a judge sentenced Glenn Ford to death for the November 5, 1983 death of a Shreveport, LA jeweler. In August 1988, Ford entered Angola’s death row, the nation’s largest maximum-security prison. On March 11, 2014, Ford walked out of the maximum security prison at Angola with an exoneration of his claims of innocence, after 30 years of insisting he was innocent. Oh, and he was accompanied by Stage 3 lung...

The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has committed atrocities that could amount to genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, a United Nations monitor reported today. An investigation team of the UN Human Rights Office found that ISIL has committed killings, torture, rape and sexual slavery, forced religious conversions and the conscription of children — which are usually seen as crimes against humanity and war...

Across the country and the globe, drivers are perpetually fighting what they believe to be a broken system when it comes to speeding fines, whilst governments and public service departments reassure citizens that their procedures are correct and accurate. Nevertheless, there is a growing fear that the average individual is fair game for a complex and opaque revenue raising scheme that isn’t actually designed to protect motorists...

The courts are necessary appendages of government that circumvent democratic ideals in the way they are structured and how they function. In most nations, judges are appointed rather than elected, as is true for American federal justices. (Many states and municipalities in the U.S, have their judges elected in political campaigns.) Even though the Senate must confirm candidates for the federal bench after nomination by the president,...

WASHINGTON — Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? The title of Martin Luther King Jr.’s last book, published in 1967 after Selma and after the passage of the Voting Rights Act, poses a perennially appropriate question — about our country’s struggle over race, of course, but also about our larger quest for justice. It is much better than the question President Obama rightly scorned on Saturday as he...

WASHINGTON STATE POT GROWERS FACE PRISON WHILE TRAITOROUS FORMER GENERAL WILL WALK On March 3, 2015, there was brutal cold and the hangover from several major snow storms to contend with in the Northeast and Midwest, unseasonably chilly weather in Florida that had natives and tourists alike bundling up, and intermittent rain and fog in the Pacific Northwest, but none of this kept the American criminal justice system from grinding...

Read Obama’s Speech On Selma President Barack Obama spoke Saturday at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama to mark the 50th anniversary of the civil rights march in the state that was slated to go from Selma to Montgomery. It was nicknamed Bloody Sunday because the march was halted when state troopers violently attacked the demonstrators with clubs, whips...

Chairman of the Bundestag’s NSA Committee of Inquiry Patrick Sensburg has led Berlin’s almost two-year long probe into the scandal exposed by Edward Snowden surrounding NSA mass surveillance. Last year Sensburg reportedly ordered music to be played at committee meetings ‘just in case’ and at least two moles were discovered passing information from the Committee to U.S. spies. Now, according to Germany’s...

Hillary Clinton’s emails by Mike Peters OF RELATED INTEREST: –Team Clinton Will Beat the Press – Again –Clinton, White House Play Delicate Dance As Emails Await Release --Review of Hillary Clinton emails to take months: official --Republicans see gold in Hillary Clinton emails Mike Peters is recognized as one of our nation’s most prominent cartoon artists for his outstanding work as both a political and comic...

Has the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership [SPP] of North America gone too far, and when does “integration” became a byword for foreign coercion or even occupation? For Mexico’s La Jornada, Carlos Fazio calls President Enrique Peña Nieto a tool of Washington for seeking changes to the country’s Federal Law of Firearms and Explosives to allow undercover U.S. agents to lawfully carry weapons in Mexico....

Updated | In the wake of a Department of Justice report released Wednesday that said the Ferguson, Missouri, Police Department routinely engages in “a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct…that violates the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution, and federal statutory law,” many locals are asking if the department, and the...

Conor Friedersdorf points out that Hillary doesn’t really want the electorate to know what our government is up to. We’re learning not about her support but rather her battles with “transparency.” I think a lot of us figured Hillary out back in ’08. But the issue is even more relevant today as the latest news confirms her disregard for, well, the partnership that democracy demands of appointed and elected...

Since Hugo Chavez was first elected president of Venezuela in 1999, the country’s leaders have charged the United States with overtly and covertly working to undermine its government, which Washington regards as hostile to its interests. Never mind that according to former President Jimmy Carter, Venezuela has ‘the best electoral system in the world.’ For Mexico’s La Jornada, columnist Angel Guerra Cabrera...

The recently reported theft by American and British intelligence of SIM card codes for potentially billions of smart phones around the world may be a tipping point in thinking about how much crime a democracy is willing to allow its spies to commit. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung columnist Jasper von Altenbockum writes that ‘If even American or British intelligence agencies are so unscrupulous, others will be even more...

Nancy Hollander is a partner at the law firm of Freedman, Boyd, Hollander, Goldberg, Urias & Ward in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her practice is largely devoted to criminal cases, including those involving national security issues. She has also been counsel in numerous civil cases, forfeitures and administrative hearings, and has argued and won a case involving religious freedom in the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Hollander also...